Tube HD (for Mac)

Tube HD, iLifetouch's $3.99 Mac app, brings the wilds of YouTube to your desktop. Described as a "smart player" designed to enhance the video viewing experience, Tube HD has a few commendable features?such as the choice of a small, pinnable video player that lets you do other things while occasionally peeking at the video?but a number of design elements prevent this player from reaching its potential. Flawed design elements are amplified by the $3.99 price tag for what is, after all, a free service.

Getting Started With Tube HD
Launching the app opens a homescreen that displays a handful of YouTube clips. Tube HD, unfortunately, doesn't let you know if the highlighted videos are randomly generated or pulled from YouTube's most popular videos, or where they do come from. Above the main viewing area is a menu bar that lets you log into your YouTube account, tinker with navigation buttons, open a search box, add a playlist, and other expected options.

Logging in can be problematic. Sometimes clicking the login icon logs you in; at other times it does absolutely nothing. But there's no indication that you've logged in, even after you've done so, as the login icon didn't change to your username or "logged in." I knew that I was logged in only because I saw fresh videos from channels to which I subscribe. That's just bad UI design.

Clicking a video that's on your home screen brings you to a playback screen where a spinning "loading" icon loops about. Out of the dozens of times that I've tried to get it to load, it refused. Instead, I had to click the orange "Play This Now" icon in the upper-right portion of the screen, which opened a second smaller window. Clicking the play button in the smaller window began playback.

The Video Watching Experience
Those initial design problems aside, watching YouTube video was an enjoyable experience. Video streamed smoothly, and I liked the option to view the clips either in the smaller playback window or in full screen (you can, of course, drag the edge of the window to adjust its size). Regardless of the window size you select, you can click the pin in the upper-right corner of the window to make it the main window regardless of any other app you open. This proved incredibly handy during times when I wanted to watch a video while doing something else in the background, such as Googling information. Clicking the "Add In Queue" icon (located to the right of the "Play This Now" icon in the main window) opens a sidebar in which bookmarked videos live. The sidebar can be toggled on and off.

Design issues reared their head again, however, when I wanted to search for The Avengers movie trailer. Keyed in letters didn't appear in the search box?they appeared beneath it, jumbled up in the terms that were returned on the fly. I'm not sure how this UI sloppiness made it through the Q/A process.

Should You Download Tube HD?
Tube HD has flaws?lots of flaws?that are only exacerbated by the $3.99 price. Had this app been free, YouTube diehards might have reason to overlook some of the issues, but when you demand four bucks in a marketplace where there's plenty of quality freebie apps, you need to deliver.

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